The Train is Leaving… But Who’s Driving?

Choo choo, chug chug!

From what I’ve seen and experienced in the world of international schools there are schools that run the gamut with regard to jumping on the train of technology implementation and integration. You as a teacher have undoubtedly grown with regard to your competency and implementation of technology in the classroom. (If you answered “not really” to that last question I hate to tell you you’re in trouble!)

I know at my school we have almost every teacher participating in a classroom blog or wiki. Pretty freakin cool for a school where you couldn’t check your email outside of school just 18 short months ago. But I have to say that recently I feel like we’re at a point where things must change again… more on that later.

So I think a good place to start is to think about whose job is it to see that integration is taking place. Is it the teachers, principal, IT director, tech coach/integrator(if your lucky enough to have one), parents, students, janitor. I think the truth of the matter is that it’s all of the above. (With exception of the janitor.)

Let me share with you a really cool integration matrix from the Florida Center for Instructional Technology that was shared with me recently.

If you look to the far right you will see the “Transformative” column. This would be unattainable without all “stakeholders” on board. But look back at the “Adoption” and realistically that is not even attainable without all stakeholders on board.

A great article that articulates the conundrum we face when moving from an “old” pullout computer class VS a more integrated approach is this article by David Warlick entitled “What Difference Might one “S” Make”.

But how are the students going to get meet the standards and how are we going to measure it? That’s what I have the big problem with. I think David Warlick sums it up very well with this paragraph.

I have to confess that the one thing that truly bothered me about the conversation became apparent to me when someone stated that their job was to help their students gain the technology skills they will need after they graduate. It occurred to me was that, “You can’t!” We do not know what skills they will need. We do not know what word processing will look like in ten years — in five years — or if it will still exist. We do not even know if there will be something new, a new killer app, something that we have no hope of “training” them for today.”

So in my mind we have have to shift away from trying to pin down exactly what applications students need to know but rather the skills they need to acquire in order to achieve what they want to achieve using any form of technology.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We have to start somewhere and many of us are stuck in the middle as our schools make the shift to a more integrated approach. The one big hurdle is that the younger kids are acquiring the skills along the way while the older kids are expected to already have them. And in some cases they just haven’t had the exposure so therefore they must be taught these specific skills. And if we’ve moved to an integrated approach some classroom teachers are hesitant to take away time from teaching “standards related material” to teach these (in their mind) somewhat mundane skills. Moving forward I think it’s good for a school to at least have a common understanding as to what we can expect of students at what age. Here is a fantastic piece of work that from what I can tell was spearheaded by Matt Lovegrove with help from Steve Greenfield, David Sheppard and Claire Waite. I think this can be very useful in laying out what is expected by what grade as well as what you can use to teach those skills. I have seen it a couple different places but I got this version from John McLear’s blog.

While I don’t think it would be fair to assign a specific set of applications for each student to know by a specific grade I do think that having a list of applications that a student could use to acquire a skill by a certain age can’t hurt. I think they should be able to use whatever they want (within reason) as long as it achieves the intended goal. It takes a team to make this happen. Administration has to put systems in place that allow teachers and ICT coaches/integrators to work together and to ensure that students have adequate resources and exposure to the appropriate tools. And of course the students need to be the ones taking the bull by the horns diving right in.

Where is your school at? What sort of growing pains have you experienced? What words of wisdom can you share?